MCPHS, city share benefits

Sunday

Sep 30, 2012 at 6:00 AM

Nick Kotsopoulos Politics and the City

When students from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences march in Worcester’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, they carry a banner along the parade route that thanks the city and its people for all their support.

It’s the college’s small way of showing its appreciation to the community.

“The city of Worcester welcomed us with open arms when we came here in 2000,” MCPHS President Charles F. Monahan Jr. said. “Thanks to the cooperation and support of the city administration, the City Council and the community as a whole, we have been very successful and have thrived in Worcester.”

Truth be told, the next time MCPHS students participate in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, City Manager Michael V. O’Brien and city councilors may want to consider marching right behind them, carrying their own banner that thanks the college for all it has done for Worcester.

That’s because the college has done a lot for the downtown in more ways than one.

Since 2000, MCPHS has invested more than $350 million in the downtown, acquiring nine buildings in the process — mostly in the Foster/Norwich street area — and renovating them into attractive, state-of-the-art education facilities. The buildings were either underutilized or largely vacant and badly in need of facelifts.

As part of that investment, the college spent $16.8 million on the purchase of the former Crowne Plaza hotel at Lincoln Square, which went into receivership in 2009 after its owner defaulted on more than $16 million in mortgage debt. The hotel eventually closed in June 2010 before MCPHS stepped in and bought it.

In addition to breathing new life into that important anchor property on North Main Street — the 243 room, nine-story building was renovated into housing and classroom space — the college invested another $10 million in that property in the construction of a six-story, 54,000-square-foot building that will house the school’s new optometry program.

Imagine what North Main Street would look like if the former hotel remained dark and empty, along with the vacant old courthouse across Main Street and the vacant Worcester Memorial Auditorium across Lincoln Square?

Needless to say, it wouldn’t be a welcome sight.

More importantly, though, MCPHS has brought more people into the downtown, as witnessed by the invasion of its white lab coat-wearing students — a sight that has become a staple in the downtown during the day.

“The waves of students in white lab jackets throughout downtown are a wonderful reminder of our progress,” Mr. O’Brien said. “For that we are most grateful to people like Charlie Monahan and the (MCPHS) trustees. Their commitment to our community is nothing short of amazing.

“They could have chosen to invest their $350 million anywhere in the nation and they would have been welcomed with open arms and heralded as heroes,” he added. “But they chose Worcester and our downtown, and for that we continue to welcome them with open arms and hold them in high regard.”

What’s been most impressive about all this is that MCPHS has done it all on its own. It has never approached the city about seeking any kind of tax-incentives, tax breaks or other kind of financial enticements.

“All they have asked for is for our support and our encouragement,” Mr. O’Brien said.

True, an educational institution such as MCPHS does not have to pay property taxes on its buildings because of its tax-exempt status. But of the nine buildings it does own in Worcester, MCPHS pays full taxes on three of them, according to Mr. Monahan.

In addition, it also became the first college institution in the city to sign a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes deal with the city back in 2008. Under the 25-year agreement, MCPHS makes voluntary payments to the city in lieu of property taxes each year; those payments are based on 20 percent of what the property taxes would have been for the tax-exempt properties it has.

Over the life of the agreement, the college’s total payments to the city will be about $1.5 million, with that money going directly to support the operations of the Worcester Public Library.

On top of all that, MCPHS is now looking to increase its presence in the downtown even more.

Last week, the college announced it intends to double the enrollment of its 1,200-student Worcester campus over the next five to six years, as it plans to increase capacity in its existing Worcester-based academic programs and develop additional programs for the campus.

To accommodate that growth in its programs, the college is gearing up for the development of additional facilities, especially housing in the downtown area.

The way Mr. Monahan sees it, Worcester has been good for MCPHS, and the college, in turn, wants to be good for Worcester.

Because the 600,000-square-foot MCPHS flagship campus in Boston, which serves 4,500 students, cannot accommodate any more growth, the college’s trustees are looking to expand its programs at its campuses in Worcester and Manchester, N.H.

Mr. Monahan, who happens to be a Worcester native, said the college is continuing to explore more real estate opportunities in the downtown, and he expects to be making an announcement “in the near future” about those plans.

Needless to say, the folks at City Hall should be pinching themselves; they couldn’t ask for anything more.

For years and years, city officials had desperately tried to reverse the declining trend of Worcester’s downtown. Yet, in a little more than a decade, the MCPHS, under Mr. Monahan’s leadership, have been able to breathe much-needed new life into the downtown.